The fire still burns for Terry Bradshaw, former Super Bowl MVP quarterback.

It is Sunday morning on CBS' NFL Today and more than 6 million
people are watching. NFL analyst Terry Bradshaw is airing it out in
the West 57th Street studio. "It's put-up-or-shut-up time for John
Elway, Jerry Glanville and Randall Cunningham," he announces, warming
to his take-that, animated self. The script is no longer in his hands
as it was in the 1970s in a huddle at Three Rivers Stadium in
Pittsburgh. But he is still the guy others listen to.

Bradshaw's summation about Elway is a disguised challenge: "I have a
hard time with a player who's had three bad years in a row," he
explains later in his hotel suite. "And then he gets rewarded with a
huge contract."

From Atlanta coach Glanville, Bradshaw simply wants results. In a game
of word association, the name Glanville might suggest two stale
elements of style: a fetish for strolling the sidelines in black
threads and his once having left two tickets for Elvis at the main
gate. This action was universally regarded as amusing by sportscasters
and most every Joe Bag O'Donuts who tunes in or calls a radio
station. Meanwhile--minor detail--the Falcons have 21 wins and 31
losses during Glanville's four-year term. Bradshaw isn't letting
anyone forget that record.

But Bradshaw's lengthy analysis of Cunningham brims with pith and
insight--not only into Cunningham, but into himself as
well. "Cunningham has always been a guy who is more interested in his
numbers than in the team. I listen to him; I watch him and I come away
with the impression that this guy is more impressed with himself than
I am. Consequently, he won't speak to me either."

Bradshaw pauses and goes on to connect apparently fractured ideas,
being a little more expansive off-air than he usually is on-air, and
that's saying something. "Then he wears these hats saying, 'Let Me Be
Me.' I have a hard time with these guys in leadership roles that won't
lead," Bradshaw explains.

As luck of the scheduling draw would have it, and at the insistence of
Cunningham's intrepid agent, Bradshaw gets to deliver his Cunningham
lines in person ... before those 6 million people. "He doesn't much
care for your partner," Cunningham's agent warned show host, Greg
Gumbel (Today Show host Bryant's brother), who took the
call. "But he does like you." Promos teased viewers, trumpeting
Cunningham's arrival. People who knew the game from the inside out
wouldn't be leaving the screen for pregame nachos. A tension
convention was approaching.

To make this a more comfortable confrontation, the CBS crew arranged
three plush chairs away from the desk. Gumbel sat between the two
quarterbacks, who seconds before were tossing a football
around. Bradshaw and Cunningham were turned toward one another, with
Gumbel full face to the camera as if waiting to referee a mayoral
pissing session. Cunningham sat back-to-chair, upright and uptight,
impassive. Bradshaw hunched forward, the sitting equivalent of a down
lineman.

Bradshaw first compliments Cunningham's early season heroics. But
then the leadership question, the question that had to come, the
question that has tugged at Cunningham more than linebackers do. As
Bradshaw speaks, Cunningham's eyes grow narrow. "Some of my teammates
thought your statement last year about me being a good athlete was
racist," flies Cunningham's baffling rejoinder. Say what? Gumbel
intercepts, asking Cunningham if he thinks the remark is racist. No,
Bradshaw had "a job to do," Cunningham offers. To be sure, there is a
tired and perhaps unwitting tendency to characterize black athletes as
abundantly talented, while white athletes are all intelligent and
scrappy. Bradshaw replies that there are great athletes, black and
white.

Bradshaw regroups and returns to his focus--the leadership
issue--since Cunningham's tepid quid pro quo was about as successful
as an arm tackle of Jim Brown. Or as Bradshaw might say, "that dog
won't hunt." The twang in the voice doesn't indicate racism in the
heart, and more than a few football fans would describe Cunningham as
a great athlete, but not a great quarterback. Consider: though
Cunningham is already in his ninth year, he also is 30 and has won
just one of five of his playoff games with the Eagles. Now, he says
that he has always been a leader. Maintaining this in the face of the
evidence and Bradshaw's pointed barbs, however, just doesn't work.

The segment ends with Bradshaw triumphantly drumming the chair to the
rhythm of studio music. Cunningham gazes off, blankly, as if he'd just
thrown a playoff interception he couldn't fathom, as if an early frost
had descended on West 57th Street. All things considered, it is a
propitious moment for a commercial break.

At 45, Bradshaw still gears up for the big one on Sunday--his NFL
Today segments, game highlights and half-time shows throughout the
afternoon. He once called his analysis "baby talk," because of the
keep-it-simple advice that comes from above. But now and then there
are the glowing signs, those Sundays where fans who missed his playing
days can still catch a glimmer of the white heat within. That brief,
slam-dunk-in-your-face, no-holds-barred confrontation with Cunningham
offered up the quintessential definition of the man Bradshaw has
become away from the playing field--just as tough and straightforward
as in his playing days. While Bradshaw no longer lines up against NFL
defenses, he still moves his six-foot-three-inch, 225-pound frame
quickly enough to run six miles in 62 minutes. And his description of
how to keep an NFL-scarred physique in shape also explains his drive
in life. "I can't compete anymore; it's kind of like competing with
myself."

It is only fitting that the shape of his life has brought him to this
point. The football analyst's week--like the player's--begins on
Tuesday. The demands of reading notes, reviewing tape and rehearsing
in the studio adds structure--and about $700,000 a year--to the simple
Roanoke, Texas, life on a cattle ranch with wife Charla and their two
children. The week-long preparation of an NFL quarterback
finishes--often ingloriously--with about 12 minutes of running time on
Sunday, an absurdly brief epilogue to six days of concealed aches and
pains. Bradshaw now gleans material from USA Today and a
voluminous 200 pages of statistics and facts meticulously gathered by
the CBS staff. "And then I use about 1 percent of it," he cracks. If
he talks too long, Gumbel is there to "bring him back." So all his
preparation results in fiery analysis and zealous demonstrations fit
between commercial breaks.

One moment he'll say that television causes him to lose focus and how
weekends away cause him to miss time with his wife and children. "If I
had to it all over again, I wouldn't want any part of this. You lose
sight..." The next moment he talks of lucrative acting offers that
"people keep bringing me" and of the friendship between him and his
partner Gumbel. Could he really give up this gig, this town, this
adulation? Give up the cab drivers and the cops and the sidewalk
wanderers shouting, "Hey, Terry"? Sure, there's a chance.

But for now, he still strives for excellence, just as he did from 1971
through 1984, a time during which he steered a once hapless Pittsburgh
team to four Super Bowl wins. "That was serious," he says, "this
isn't." "That" refers to the huddles and the preparation and the 1,001
cranium-crunching skirmishes that comprised his football days. "This"
is television. It's Bradshaw's nature to invest television time with
play because he is playful and so he sees television that way. When he
complains, he is venting disillusionment with the cutthroat,
get-ratings-at-any-cost philosophy of the networks. There is not a
single "I" in team, but the team concept gets lost sometimes in the
world of television. "I think this business is very cruel, very
cold. I've got Rick Gentile (executive producer) now, before that I
had Ted Shaker, before then Terry O'Neill," he says, explaining how
quickly management can change.

What's more, critics of NFL Today snipe at the Gumbel-Bradshaw
duo for having too much fun. One can reduce sports shows to rating
numbers just as surely as one can reduce a quarterback's efforts to
statistics. But to Bradshaw sports is the toy shop of life. Silly boy,
he still expects the artificial-turf-ground-acquisition pastime to be
a diversion, not a numbers-crunching duel in which television anchors,
producers and everyone else in sight eventually fails to make the
final cut. One gets the unmistakable impression that Bradshaw thinks
the more demanding things in life occurred years ago. Now he would
just like to be with his family, plow the farm and fish. And fill
Sundays with his inimitable style of teaching football to the masses
while enjoying himself in the process.

Bradshaw's childhood on a farm in rural Louisiana filled him with
respect for hard work. He also played hard. His father Bill recalls
that Terry, "always had to have a ball in his hand. I had a swing set
that I hung a tire and a five-gallon bucket on. He would throw it 10
feet, 20 feet, 30 feet--most of the time by himself." The tire and
bucket lasted, but the chains broke with fatigue. He wore out leather
footballs by throwing them into an open field, onto a roof, even into
trees.

As a junior in high school, he won a distance-throwing competition,
tossing the ball 72 yards. "I could always throw. I was clumsy,
awkward, skinny, not a great athlete. But every weekend I was throwing
that football. I could throw it deep; I could throw it hard. But I
wasn't accurate. I hated short passes; I was bored with them."

But when his college days began, the most controversial thing he'd
done up till then was fail the American College Test (A.C.T.) at the
University of Louisiana. On purpose. He simply wanted to play at the
smaller, less competitive Louisiana Tech, despite the wishes of those
around him. Remarks about Bradshaw being "three bricks shy of a load"
and "too stupid to call his own plays" trace back to that time. He
laughs because he has heard it so many times. "I have always been five
years behind everyone else when it comes to maturity. I hate telling
people no; it's still a problem."

A.C.T. or no A.C.T., it's hard to argue with the act that followed. He
was selected No. 1 in the 1970 college draft. ("I didn't think I'd be
a first-rounder, so obviously I didn't know much about my talents.")

After several years as a backup, Bradshaw emerged as the Pittsburgh
Steelers' No. 1 guy. Four Super Bowls later, Bradshaw was mentioned in
the same breath as Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr and Sammy Baugh. He
won two Super Bowl MVPs and still holds Super Bowl records for average
gain, career (11.10 yards) and average gain, game (14.71 in Super
Bowl XIV versus Los Angeles). He was also unanimous choice for MVP in
Super Bowls XIII and XIV. And only a guy named Joe Montana has
equalled Bradshaw's distinction of being the winning Super Bowl
quarterback four times.

Despite the staggering success, he is a minimalist in recalling his
feats. "There's only been four great days in my professional football
career," he recounts, referring to the victories in the 1975, '76, '79
and '80 Super Bowls. That sounds like the ultimate reduction of a
career to its simplest components. But the high of being a football
player may never be equalled again.

"I was called to be a professional football player. That was my
life. When it comes to professional football--I don't know of an
emotion that's ever captured it.

"Everything now is a by-product of what we did then. I can't
appreciate this nearly as much as my success as a football
player. This is individualistic, that was team. To get 10 players in
the huddle and the expressions and the talk and the language and the
bond that's there and to take these players in front of a crowd and to
go to the heights we were expected to--believe me there isn't an
athlete in the world who doesn't say to himself, 'I can't believe
these good things happened to me.'

"It's just all that work from a child all the way up, and you see it
develop and unfold. It's just unparalleled. I've raised world-class
quarter horses and caught huge fish and seen my children grow up. But
that long process, to stand on the field and to know we've got this
thing in control and win those Super Bowls. As long as it takes to get
that feeling, it takes 24 hours or less to leave. Then you start
creating it again."

When a tendon in his right elbow no longer obeyed his will, Bradshaw
retired. "There was nothing more to conquer, other than to conquer the
same thing I'd conquered. And to do it again. I also knew it was over
and I could accept it and go on. I could walk down the street with the
greats of the game and never feel I had to take a backseat to anyone,
no matter what they say. That's a wonderful feeling. I don't have to
be called the greatest; I don't need that. I got four rings. I was
quarterback; I called my own plays."

His career was complete, his legacy intact. But he also doesn't grow
ecstatic with the memories or by rehashing the past. "I can't have
that anymore," he says of the glory days. "I have this habit of
burying things and relationships." While the public glory lingers in
arguments and unending anecdotes about Swann and Stallworth and Harris
and Green, for Bradshaw yesterday is yesterday and today begins a
fresh reckoning and self-appraisal.

And things to get enthusiastic about. Every weekend trip to New York
from Roanoke involves Bradshaw in a series of rituals. A Friday
meeting with Gumbel and the edit-and-production guys might land him in
La Scala for dinner and "a beer or three or four," says
Gumbel. Bradshaw enjoys the place; he likes how the maître d'
greets him with a hug.

Before arriving at the studio to record promos on Saturday, he heads
for Ermenegildo Zegna, a men's shop where "my man" Tony Garriett tries
to dress him for a Sunday in front of the world. Since he travels
light--a gym bag and a suit bag--he needs accessories each week. The
ritual of sifting through fine cotton and silk results in a selection
of two shirts, two ties, a pocket square and a pair of suspenders. For
$750. This seems a hefty price for traveling light, but if he did
carry them along, he would miss this simple Saturday ritual--the
sampling of the shop's finery, the banter, the fussing over him and
the pleasure of kidding with the salespeople. Bradshaw values the
things that remain week after week.

Off to the studio. There he works on reading 48 words for a
15-second promo spot. First time: 13 seconds. "Slow it down a little,"
comes a command from the edit room. He reads again. "Tomorrow on
NFL Today: Can Steve Young get the 49ers back on track? Will
Barry be able to run against the Saints? Plus the latest on Mark
Rypien, Joe Montana and Emmitt Smith. That's all tomorrow at 12:30
Eastern on NFL Today. All ya need to know." Long on exuberance,
long on Louisiana twang, but a tad too long on the pauses--he crosses
the line at 15.2 seconds. Try again. On the sixth attempt, he nails it
at 14.8 seconds. Good enough.

He then returns to the hotel to work--make calls, watch college
football and hit the notes. He fires up a Griffin's cigar.

"I don't like 'em real strong. That's why I like the
Griffin's. They smoke so-o-o-o mild, so even. I could almost chew'
em. Don't inhale 'em, though. There are two sizes. I like more water
in the humidor, no cellophane wrapper because those suckers crumble.

"I just like the taste of cigars. My grandfather was a
chewer, then my dad with his cigars. I smoke and chew, and I'm trying
to quit chewing."

Bradshaw has no profound reasons or concerns with style that lead him
to smoke cigars. "I started smoking around Mr. Rooney" (the Steelers'
late owner). It's always "Mister" Rooney in Bradshaw's lingo.

"I just started because he did it. He once offered me a cigar; I can't
remember what kind. I just liked it. After awhile I knew where he kept
his stash in his office and the secretary would let me in to get a
handful out of his humidor," says Bradshaw in wonderment. "My daddy
always smoked cigars, but dad's King Edward brand wasn't as good as
Mr. Rooney's."

When I'm home I don't smoke that many. But when I go to New York, I
bring about six. But they're expensive (about $6 a piece). So it's
hard to go out with a handful of those suckers.